Verdict: 2 / 5

Wale (pronounced Wah-leh) is someone the modern public worldwide isn’t very familiar with yet, having served for many years as the background man to Rick Ross. He is now trying to get noticed for his own merits, and while you can applaud him for his efforts, the problem remains that he may still be doing too little to distinguish himself from every other rapper out there on the market.

The problem with this latest album is not that it is bad, by any standard its fairly fun and interesting. It’s just terribly generic, all the subject matter has been covered before over and over, nothing new is brought to us. It has some success in that Wale sounds honest, so at least you can believe him, and his ego isn’t as dangerously huge as many other rappers out there. His tracks feature the standard line up of artists featuring, probably brought in from more successful friends.

The truth is, I’m not terribly interested in this album in anyway, and Wale does nothing to prove himself to new listeners, and there’s therefore very little to say about it. Its fun at times, not bad, not good, it’s just there. To make a presence in rap you need to be more dynamic than this. What is interesting however, is the fact that it is the first part of a project which will lead to a second album in a few months that is a collaboration with (of all people) Jerry Seinfeld. So at the least then he will begin to do something different, and I will be interested to see how that goes. For now, I will wait.